Radio plays used to be a staple of entertainment. Know Theatre has brought them back in the form of podcasts. Stage Manager Duncan Lyle has organized some of the regular actors from Know Theatre for a series of nine one-act plays.

New York’s Public Theater is known for cutting edge performances and popular off-site programming, including the beloved “Shakespeare in the Park.”

On June 1, The Public Theater will hold a virtual star-studded gala performance. “We Are One Public” will be a free, one-night extravaganza showcasing music, drama and storytelling artists like Glenn Close, Claire Danes, Sting, Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway and more.

It’s also a benefit for the theater, which, like all New York City theaters, has had its curtains closed since March 12.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the red-haired Mitchell Pritchett on ABC’s “Modern Family,” is co-hosting the event with Oskar Eustis, The Public Theater’s artistic director. Ferguson was supposed to be the co-star of the new Broadway show “Take Me Out,” which would have opened in April.

During a dark time for live theater, Eustis says he wanted to create an event that was accessible for all. “We Are One Public” is also a chance to financially support the theater’s work.

“My basic hope is that the people who can afford it, who can afford even small amounts, will contribute to us, but everybody will get to see it for free,” he says. “And that’s actually a wonderful way to greet an audience.”

With about three dozen performers in all separate locations, what could go wrong? Ferguson says the spirit of live storytelling is that “the show must go on” despite any glitches.

Theater in a post-pandemic world might look and feel different for a while. Eustis says theaters are positioned similarly to the rest of the world — it can either go back to normal ways or define new paths forward. He envisions a progression toward a “collective action that’s more equitable and more loving than what we did before.”

To start, that means meeting the audience where they’re at, he says.

“The first thing The Public’s going to do when we’re allowed to gather again is send out five mobile units to all the different [New York City] boroughs so that the first invitation is not ‘you come back into our theaters,’ but we’re going to go to you, to your neighborhoods and perform for you,” he says.

Because of the “tough” economy performers will be working in, he says the need to demonstrate live theater’s importance is more crucial than ever.

“If we’re not able to demonstrate that we are as important as we claim we are, we’re going to get left behind,” he says.

For now, Ferguson says live theater has to find a balance of envisioning a new world while also using the means they have to adapt virtually. Right now, actors and artists are seeking out creative ways to fulfill their work without an audience, he says.

“We create arts to be in that space with an audience, and it’s a communal thing,” he says. “And we’re having to figure out another way to do that right now.”

That’s not to say Zoom performances will be forever, Ferguson says, but “while we’re in the space, we have to find ways of sharing that art with each other because that’s what’s going to keep us alive.”

Eustis agrees. He says he spent the first two weeks of the stay-at-home orders feeling pessimistic about keeping the spirit of theater alive and well without a live audience. After several weeks, he realized sulking about the problem was “ridiculous.”

“Just because we’re in a plague, just because we’re in difficult circumstances, does not relieve me of the obligation to try to fulfill the mission of the theater,” he says. “Like always, we’re fulfilling it under different circumstances.”

While Eustis can’t see a reality where directing and acting under social distancing measures would work, he says that doesn’t stop him from imagining it. To fully experience live theater again, he says he feels in his gut it won’t be until the audience isn’t worried about getting sick.

“Once we’re not in a shelter-at-home state, I promise you, we’ll be figuring out how to test the boundaries and make theater that takes advantage of whatever circumstances are ethically and medically and legally possible for us,” he says.

As excitement mounts for “We Are One Public,” Ferguson says he’s ready for a performance free from technical mishaps.

A cyclical quirk in the calendar this year welcomes Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, on May 25, the earliest the holiday could arrive, and delivers Labor Day, the marker of the season’s conclusion, as late as possible, on Sept. 7.

The timetable oddity means nothing to Mother Nature, but to Americans it means an extra week of unofficial summer.

Depending on your circumstances during the health crisis, you could be excused for receiving the news as a tender mercy or a punch in the gut from a merciless year that just won’t quit.

Owners of seasonal businesses who are watching the unofficial start of summer under state-mandated shutdown orders might rejoice at the notion of their busy time of year being extended by a week.

Philip Szal did. He runs Rochester Pedal Tours and learned of the elongated summer while his company’s boat was being lowered into the water at the Port of Rochester for the season, only to be moored until the state lifts its restrictions.

“That’s great news,” Szal said. “Business really does slow down once Labor Day hits and once the teachers are in school and parents’ kids are in school. So if there’s an extra week, I need an extra week this year more than most years.”

The Port of Rochester CREDIT DAVID ANDREATTA/CITY NEWSPAPER

Speaking of schools, as much as parents of young children cherish their little ones, those who have already been cooped up with them at home for eight weeks might cringe at the thought of an extra week with them before schools open at the end of a long, hot summer.

Of course, that’s if schools are permitted to open in the fall.

The standing calendar for most school districts around Rochester have the first day of classes starting after Labor Day. That goes for Rochester, Greece, Brighton, Fairport, and the Irondequoits.

Schools in Penfield, Pittsford, Henrietta, and Webster open earlier, on Sept. 2, which, to be honest, seems cruel to any red-blooded American child who knows that summer is supposed to run through Labor Day.

Memorial Day is always the final Monday in May, and Labor Day the first Monday in September. There are typically 99 days between them, as any pop music station on the FM dial counting down the 99 days of summer will tell you again and again and again.

But every once in a while the calendar throws a curveball that lengthens the span between the holidays to 106 days. In a year already filled with curveballs, what’s one more?

Like any good curveball, though, this one isn’t arbitrary. Its trajectory follows a familiar pattern for anyone paying attention, which admittedly is almost no one.

Tom Kessler is an exception. He’s the general manager at Smith Boys of Rochester boat dealership and knew all about the extra week of summer.

“That’s something we pay attention to because we’re in the boat business,” Kessler said. “The longer the season, the better.”

Here is how the pattern works in its simplest form: Every time Memorial Day arrives at its earliest, Labor Day lands at its latest.

That occurs in a staggered but recurrent sequence of six years, five years, six years, 11 years, six years, five years, and so forth.

This year marks the end of the five-year span, meaning 2015 was the last time Memorial Day landed on May 25 and Labor Day on Sept. 7. Before then, it happened in 2009, 1998, 1992, 1987, 1981, 1970, and . . . you get the picture.

There won’t be such an inexhaustible summer again until 2026. With any luck, there won’t be as exhausting of a year as 2020 for a lot longer.

The Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes is moving performances online with a series of chamber music concerts. On Sunday, May 17 Augusto Diemecke and Christine Lowe-Diemecke perform on the OSFL Facebook page. Augusto takes a break from his busy online teaching schedule to talk with us.

]]>New York Comedy Clubs Closed, So Comics Have To Improvisehttps://wskg.org/news/new-york-comedy-clubs-closed-so-comics-have-to-improvise/
Thu, 07 May 2020 11:41:00 +0000https://wskg.org/?p=935480

At a time when we really need to keep a sense of humor, comedy clubs are closed. Stand-up comedians are on lockdown. So what do you do if your career is making people laugh? You can write jokes while you shelter in place, but how do you know if they’re funny?

Colin Quinn says performing on virtual platforms won’t ever come close to appearing in a club full of strangers because it lacks “the tension” of the live experience. He’s writing a book that draws from some of the material he explored in his Red States Blue States special — and says he now has no excuse not to finish it.

“I don’t know until I get in front of an audience,” says comedian Marina Franklin. For her special Single Black Female, Franklin worked out jokes in small clubs for about 100 people before filming the special for an audience of 1,000 at the Vic Theatre in Chicago.

In normal times, Franklin would be out at New York comedy clubs six nights a week. That kind of exposure can lead to acting jobs or the chance to open for bigger name comedians.

“Every night in New York City is an opportunity; you never know who’s going to see you,” she says. But during quarantine, “It’s been oddly quiet amongst the comedy community.” Franklin’s been spending more time focused on her podcast Friends Like Us but still finding the seeds of future material.

“I have had several things happen to me that are pretty funny,” she says. She got into a fight about social distancing at the farmer’s market — “not a place where you normally would fight” — and scolded the man selling fish for yelling Next! “There’s no screaming during pandemic time,” she laughs. “And why are we in a hurry? No one’s going anywhere.”

So, Franklin has material, but she’s concerned about some of her comedian friends who need audience feedback to thrive. “Some comedians, they have depression and mental illness — that’s rampant in the comedy scene, it’s rampant in the world,” she says. “So I do worry [about] the lack of feedback.”

Mike Birbiglia agrees. “Comedians rely so much on audiences to relay their deep, inner most thoughts and feelings about things,” he says. “And when you can’t do that on stage, it’s worrisome.”

Like a lot of comedians, Birbiglia has turned to the Internet to connect with audiences. With help from Roy Wood, Jr., he started “Tip Your Waitstaff,” a series of Instagram Live videos in which Birbiglia talks to fellow comedians about the jokes they’re working on. Gary Gulman,John Mulaney,Emmy Blotnick and Hannibal Buress are among the comedians who’ve participated.

The series is a fundraiser to help comedy clubs around the country including The DC Improv (where Birbiglia got his start), The Comedy Cellar in New York, The Stardome outside Birmingham, Ala., and The Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Ind.

Birbiglia says the Instagram audience takes some getting used to, especially keeping up with the streaming bursts of written comments that quickly roll up the screen. After he interviewed John Mulaney they talked on the phone about how fast the comments go by. Mulaney likened it to watching “1,000 audience members all talk at the same time.’ ”

Birbiglia has had to cancel a number of appearances because of the pandemic. He figures he might as well get used to performing virtually since there’s no telling when clubs and theaters will reopen.

Veteran stand-up Colin Quinn was always planning to use this time to finish writing his forthcoming book Overstated: A Coast-To-Coast Roast of the 50 States. The pandemic “takes all your excuses away for not working on things like that,” jokes Quinn. He’s hearing that comedy clubs won’t reopen until 2021. As for performing on virtual platforms like Zoom, Quinn doesn’t think they’ll ever come close to replacing a club full of strangers because it lacks “the tension” of the live experience.

“It’s got to have that element of ‘Oh, this could really fall apart, and this person could be collectively, publicly humiliated,’ ” Quinn says. “That’s part of comedy. It’s the thing you try to avoid in comedy but it’s got to be in the air.”

As for new jokes he’s thinking about now, Quinn’s latest annoyance is “the new sincerity.” It’s always been there, but now, in the midst of the coronavirus, he says “everybody on social media feels compelled to weigh in and go, ‘Hey, guys, be safe. Put your mask on.’ ”

Mark Twain once said that laughter is humanity’s “one really effective weapon,” and without it, all of the comedians I interviewed talked about feeling “powerless.” Rob Corddry and some of his comedian friends have been making funny videos specifically intended to cheer up health care workers. Corddry got the idea from a doctor friend who was diagnosed with COVID-19 but kept working from home, taking care of the mental well-being of her staff. He says she was worried that their spirits were sagging.

“She was worried about their cheer, you know, because that affects everything. That affects their momentum,” says Corddry. “So I just thought: Well, I know a lot of funny people that can make videos.” Eventually those videos turned into a fundraiser called Funny You Should Mask in which comedians such as Eric Andre,Sasheer Zamata and Nicole Byer interview health care workers.

Corddry says it is “very sad” to see comedy venues in dire straits. At the same time, he says, something this awful could also lead to some great material. “When comedians get this much of a glimpse at their own mortality, you can expect some pretty funny comedy coming down the pike,” says Corddry.

Even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic — with tourists gone, and commuters home — around 30,000 people pass through Times Square each day. A new public art project unveiled Friday wants to give them something to look at — visual messages of hope, gratitude and public safety on Times Square’s iconic billboards.

Times Square billboard owners have donated ad space to make way for artworks about the pandemic such as the one above by illustrator Maira Kalman. Jean Cooney, director of Times Square Arts, says that in healthier times, many people come to Times Square “because they’re seeking something — they feel that if they’ve come to Times Square then they’ve seen New York City … they’ve seen America.”

Jean Cooney, director of Times Square Arts, oversees temporary installations of public art in the Square’s plaza and on its billboards. And she says there are still people going through Times Square and many of them have critical jobs — they are health care workers, law enforcement, grocery and pharmacy workers, and others.

Times Square Arts wanted to say thanks, and it turns out the Poster House museum and Print Magazine had the same idea. So they decided to collaborate, says Poster House museum director Julia Knight.

Billboard owners — whose spaces were now depleted of advertisers — “really wanted to contribute their assets to something beneficial to the city,” Knight explains.

So they donated their billboard space. The three organizations chose artists and designers to fill them. The list includes Milton Glaser who designed the “I New York” logo, artist and illustrator Maira Kalman, and Matt Dorfman, who art directs the New York Times Book Review.

For his Times Square piece, Dorfman created bold bumble bee yellow and black stripes that simply repeats the phrase “six feet is six feet.”

“With nearly anything else that I’m doing I’m trying to assign fine art values to a piece of design, insofar as that I’d like people to stop, sit and look at it for a little while,” Dorfman explains. “This particular kind of poster kind of demands for the opposite reaction. It’s something that you should read and absorb and then quickly move past.”

Another image in rotation shows health care workers in masks with angel wings below the words “New York Loves You.”

Images from the billboard project will also be displayed on nearly 2,000 screens throughout the five boroughs, and just above the entrance to Lincoln Tunnel.

For the project’s second phase, the art collective For Freedoms is working with artists around the world to make pieces for the initiative. Hank Willis Thomas is a member of For Freedoms. When Thomas thinks of Times Square he sees New Year’s Eve — a kaleidoscope of colors and lights — and the tens of thousands of people in the square thinking about the past and looking forward to what comes next. He says now’s the time to give Times Square some of that energy back.

“Right now everyone is at home reflecting on all of our life choices in looking towards an uncertain future,” Thomas says. “I think Times Square is this really special container in many of our hearts and minds for a space for joy, reflection and communion. In a way, you can say it needs our energy even when we’re not there.”

A native of Waterloo, NY, mezzo-soprano Lindsay Kate Brown was one of nine finalists in the Grand Finals Concert, out of thousands of singers from around the world. She talks to us by phone from Houston, where she is with the Houston Grand Opera, about the process, and about a dizzying week when she sang in the Metropolitan Opera Grand Finals Concert, and won another competition just two days before.

Bars across New York closed this week under a mandate from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Vinnie Azzarelli is the owner of VOLO Bar and Lounge in Corning. He decided to turn tragedy into art and hung a 16-by-8 foot blank canvas outside his shop.

“I knew that I was going to have to close my doors to the public,” Azzarelli said. “And I was trying to think of a way I could give back to the community that supported me for the last five-and-a-half years.”

Azzarelli invited local artists and the public to share in creating art while this global health pandemic keeps people out of school and work.

“This more than anything else in our lifetimes, I’d say, is going to bring us all together because we’re all in the same boat,” he said.

While Azzarelli wanted to send a message of unity at a time of social distancing, he asked that anyone who participated to put health safety first and keep six feet apart if there are multiple artists working at once.

According to Azzarelli, the community art project will stay up until the concern subsides.

The Cayuga Vocal Ensemble presents ‘Passages’, a concert of music old and new musing on the passage of time. Guest conductor Sean Linfors joins us by phone to talk about the concert, which features music by Johannes Brahms, Dale Trumbore, and Jonathan Dove.

]]>A Theatrical Project from 2018 is Back by Popular Demandhttps://wskg.org/arts/a-theatrical-project-from-2018-is-back-by-popular-demand/
Wed, 11 Mar 2020 18:33:23 +0000https://wskg.org/?p=878342

Brian Briggs

Sarah Chalmers

The Civic Ensemble is bringing back ‘Streets Like This’. Artistic Director Sarah Chalmers and actor Brian Briggs join us to talk about using theatre to address social issues, the ReEntry Theatre Project, and how the original project began, leading to a production in 2018.